Lanark: A Life in 4 Books
Canongate, 1981
Gray's debut novel begins in the dank inferno of Unthank, where people are plagued by a sinister beurocracy. The tale shifts to the young life of Duncan Thaw in Glasgow, documenting his growth towards manhood. This narrative is interwoven with that of the Lanark character, forming a contemporary epic.
Unlikely Stories, Mostly
Canongate, 1983
Fourteen remarkable tales, written between 1951 and 1983. As with all Gray's work, this volume is richly designed and illustrated throughout. Contains 'Five Letters From An Eastern Empire', widely considered to be Gray's finest short fiction.
1982 Janine
Jonathan Cape, 1984
Jock McLeish is an 'aging, divorced, alcoholic, insomniac supervisor of security installations', and 1982 Janine is the novel of his repressed life, set against the erotic fantasies which he has devised to escape from his self-loathing.
5 Scottish Artists: An Introduction
Famedram Publishing, 1984
Gray's introduction to the '5 Scottish Artists Retrospective Show' mounted in Glasgow's MacLellan Gallery in 1986. The show featured the work of artists Carole Gibbons, John Connolly, Alan Fletcher, Alasdair Taylor, as well as that of Gray himself.
Out of Print
Lean Tales (with James Kelman and Agnes Owens)
Jonathan Cape, 1985
Bringing together short stories by Gray and fellow Glasgow writers James Kelman and Agnes Qwens (with whom Gray attended Philip Hobsbaum's writers group in the 1970's).
The Fall of Kelvin Walker: A Fable of the Sixties
Canongate, 1985
Set in London in the 1960s. The eponymous hero of this novella is in London to seek his fortune, and determines to start at the top.
Old Negatives: Four Verse Sequences
Jonathan Cape, 1989
Compiling four verse sequences written between 1952 and 1983.
Out of Print
McGrotty and Ludmilla
Dog & Bone, 1990
Novella adapted from a 1975 radio play which Gray had derived from the bones of the Aladdin fable, McGrotty and Ludmilla is a romance set in the halls of modern Whitehall.
Something Leather
Jonathan Cape, 1990
Gray's most controversial novel to date, Something Leather is, according to the critics, either his 'most entertaining, and maybe his best, novel to date' or 'a confection of self-indulgent tripe'. It is the tale of the tangled love lives of four women, set in Glasgow between 1963 and 1990.
Poor Things
Bloomsbury, 1992
Poor things contains the biographical writings of Archibald McCandless MD, prefaced and annotated by Gray. McCandless' tale features the extraordinary story of the woman who was to become his wife, and of the 'Frankenstein' surgeon who saved her life.
Why Scots Should Rule Scotland
Canongate, 1992 (Revised 1997)
Originally written for the 1992 General Election, this polemical work is 'addressed to every Scottish voter [and] argues from geography and history that Scotland needs a government as distinct from England as Portugal from Spain, the Netherlands from Germany'.
Ten Tales Tall and True
Bloomsbury, 1993
Despite the title, this volume contains fourteen diverse tales encompassing social realism, sexual comedy, science fiction and satire.
A History Maker
Canongate, 1994
This tale of border warfare (both military and erotic) is set in the Ettrick Forest of the twenty-third Century. Wat Dryhope is unhappy about his clan's violent and permissive lifestyle, but the formidable Delilah Puddock is set to teach Wat to embrace the traditional values (and the women) that he truly loves.
Five Letters from an Eastern Empire
Penguin 60s, 1995
One of a series of sixty small books published to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Penguin Books. This is an unillustrated version of the story originally collected in Unlikely Stories, Mostly.
Mavis Belfrage: A Romantic Novel with Five Shorter Tales
Bloomsbury, 1996
Six tales, the longest of which is the novella-length Mavis Belfrage. Other titles are 'A Night Off', 'Mr Goodchild', 'Money', 'Edison's Tractus', and 'The Shortest Tale'.
Working Legs: A Play for Those Without Them
Dog & Bone, 1997
Subtitled 'a play for people without them', this drama was penned for the Bird of Paradise theatre group. The play documents Able McMann's trials after a near-fatal road accident leaves him able to walk, in a world where people normally get around in wheelchairs.
Sixteen Occasional Poems
Morag McAlpine, 2000
Sixteen poems written while Gray was working on the massive Book of Prefaces, and which reflect some of the themes which occur in the larger work: self-government, love, God, legends, language, and some national states.
The Book of Prefaces
Bloomsbury, 2000
With a gestation period of sixteen years, when The Book of Prefaces finally appeared it more than lived up to expectations. A vast volume, this anthology compiles prefaces and marginalia from fourteen Centuries of literate thought.
The Ends of Our Tethers: 13 Sorry Stories
Canongate, 2003
A collections of thirteen tales about people in "the last stages of physical, moral and social decreptitude".